Goings on at Casa De Garabaldi

 A Few things going on at Casa De Garabaldi.....

One thing that I did was buy a car cover for "My Precious", since I am not driving her as much since I am driving the Focus a lot more, I have had problems with Dead Battery, and I went to Harbor Freight looking for a "Trickle" charger and found one...

    Started the Install process,

   I like Zip Ties, Keeps things neat.

      This shows the actual plug, it matches the plug I use for my Motorcycle trickle charger.

Completed the install, Now to dig out the actual charger....

Plugged it in...

         This I did several weeks ago.

    Then we had a cold front hit, I knew it was coming, I heard Old NFO and others in the Texas area complaining about it.  And it got cold in a hurry.  So I turned on the fireplace...

       And the Dog immediately moved in.........

I had to work in the meantime....

  It was Cold........and WET.......

   Did I say Wet?..........And COLD

And I had to Work Christmas Eve and Day....

When the weather warmed up a bit, I pulled the cover off of "My Precious" so I could check the charge and saw this

    Battery was at full charge, I moved the trickle charger and cranked up the truck and let her idle for 20 minutes while I was doing some yard work and cleaning up some yard debris.  Got done and covered the truck back up.  

   

      I was trying to repair the battery jump box that I have, My son had manage to get one of the clamps broken while it was in his charge....Get it.....Charge....I will be here all week, try the veal and tip the wait staff.   Well any way I was going to try to repair the clamp...

   Well I had folded a piece of metal at work and I was going to try to see if I could use it to "Brace" the clamp over the break...

   Well it work initially.......But I then used a dremel to trim some excess metal and destroyed the structural rigidity that was necessary to make it work.....crap.    So Plan B

Yeah......Amazon.....I had gone to Harbor Freight and to several Auto Parts stores looking for clamps large enough and there were none available....Now I could have bought a Jumper Cable and destroyed it and took the clamp...but wanton destruction ain't my thing....so I went to Amazon.

    Finished it......Finally    Kept the box with the "Negative" clamp in case I need it.

     Meanwhile I had bought a oil filter for my daily driver...Remember this one..?

   Yep my Focus....Well I went to buy an oil filter for the Focus, I am having a shop I use for all my major work, they know me and all my cars since they opened do the oil change, too cold to crawl under the car right now, if the weather was warmer, different story.

but I like to use "Ford" filters. not the generic cheap filters that the shops tend to use...hey it is a quirk....my car, my quirk, so there :P but I digress

Well I go to buy a filter...

 Yeah, one of those.....I bought one of those 6 months ago and paid $7 bucks for the filter, well I bought a filter last night and it cost me dang near $10 bucks.....Jeez   "Lets Go Brandon"

  And speaking of "Brandon" we Rock banging Mechanics do have an opinion...

Saw this on the door going into the breakroom several weeks ago.....as of my last day working a couple of days ago, it is still there and there are other ways to make our opinions known...

 This was a temporary install to facilitate maintenance and we of course made sure that it was labeled appropriately so there was no doubt.

 Got rid of my Cub Cadet today, the only good thing about that mower is the motor,  I got tired getting nickel-ed and dimed by it.  I have to decide in the spring to either fork over 2 grand for another riding mower and deal with the associated maintenance cost like fuel, blades, oil, ete,ete or have a lawn service cut my grass, I have to weigh the pro's and cons, basically do a cost analysis.  In the past I thought it was strange to have someone do something that I am perfectly capable of doing, but after dealing with this lawnmower the past year, I can understand why people pay someone else.

     We went to the range today, the spousal unit had bought me gift certificates to the local range and today was "ladies Night"

                                                  laid out the .45

   Both Plastic Fantastics, Er Macks Favorite Guns  the Glocks, the Model 17 and 19

                    And the S&W .22 Pistol for the Spousal Unit :), She is shooting with me today

                                                                           The Target

   The Distance, I use this because of the unofficial Tueller Drill which I and many others have blogged before.

  The Spousal Unit firing the Smith .22 pistol, she fired that for a bit 

      This is her shooting my Glock 17 with the Holographic Sights, She liked the sights on the Glock better, easier to use, but the .22 was less recoil and less"Boom" for her. She hasn't gone shooting with me since before the birth of our son, so I was very happy to have her along.  I am hoping that she will join me more often.

   And yes this was me on New Years Day lol, I had to work both New Days Eve and New Years Day.

    What can I say...Aviation is 24/7/365.   But it pays pretty well, LOL